The East Baton Rouge School Board decided Thursday night in an 8-2 vote to explore Medicare Advantage options for its employees’ with Humana and United Healthcare in order to gain cost-savings to the school system. After a lengthy three hour meeting, the board gave authority to the administration to negotiate specific rates and parameters with the two insurance companies so retirees’ would have a clear-cut decision to make between opting into a new plan or staying with the school-funded plan.

"I’m not asking you to finalize anything this evening,” Superintendent Bernard Taylor said. Taylor said the options presented are what the Medicare plan could be. “We are just asking for direction to start negotiations,” he said.

Board members informed a majority of retirees’ in attendance Thursday night, that the board approval was only advancing the talks with the insurance companies and retirees’ current rates will remain the same with East Baton Rouge Parish School System.

The board is grappling with the issue of moving a projected 3,000 Medicare-eligible retirees from the school’s self-funded health insurance plan to a system that uses a privately-managed Medicare Advantage Plan.

In numbers presented by Mercer, a healthcare consulting firm hired by the school system, Medicare eligible retirees would need to come up with 25 percent more in premiums or about $4.4 million to cover their claims. Currently, a single retiree pays a $91 contribution, coupled with the school system contributing $355, to meet their $466 premium.

However, for 2014, Mercer said that a single retiree would have to pay $204 to meet the higher premium rate but the school system’s contribution rate would stay the same.

Keeping with status quo rates, East Baton Rouge Parish School System would pay $20.4 million in healthcare for all employees – actives, Medicare eligible and non-Medicare eligible -- which school officials said would lead to an insolvent budget.

Under the figures presented by Humana and United Healthcare, the savings to the EBRPSS ranged from $8-12 million in savings. The actual savings remains unclear because the two plans presented where based off assumptions of all retirees’ participating in the plan.

Taylor said he wants to get the healthcare insurance deal done before June 30 -- the deadline for the school’s submission of the overall budget.